As Kay Oddone mentioned, openness means different things to different people.

As far as I have been able to tell, opening learning spans far beyond our experience in the distance learning space. I’ve personally become so accustomed to an xMOOC type environment, where I play the role of the instructor and honestly speaking, 99.9% of the time I’m just listening to my own voice.

The reality is that students don’t engage as much when it comes to these types of online learning. Due to the nature of the course, they’re able to just listen to recordings or silently partake in collab sessions, and don’t actually involve themselves as they should be doing. This could raise the question of whether we’re actually enabling them to do this? Are we their enablers?

Open learning produces so many more advantages, as it allows a student to explore the endless resources at their disposal. It, in a way, forces them to be a part of the teaching process, instead of it just being a one-direction flow of information. It creates the opportunity to combine different thoughts, instead of simply being taught from one person’s point of view, and this builds on knowledge.

What benefit are we bringing to our students if we’re just there to feed them information? Naturally, as instructors, we have to stand firm in our role and be there to guide students, but should it not be such that collectively, as a group, we combine our ideas, thoughts, viewpoints, and as such, draw a conclusion about a certain topic? Would that not be more beneficial? Would that not give students more confidence whilst also ensuring that they play a part in their own learning process?

As I researched and discovered how vastly different open learning is to my idea of distance learning, I’ve come to understand that though the typical xMOOC is extremely beneficial, where knowledge is transmitted via the instructor, a cMOOC gives students a chance to be innovative and develop knowledge. Open learning again, creates that opportunity.

Distance learning has, and continues to evolve, and we need to be a part of that evolution. There is a dire need for education to become more interactive, and not just a case of content delivery. We want to give as much as we can as instructors/lecturers /facilitators, but also leave room for our students to grow on their own and develop their own viewpoints.